In the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 04, 1989, which epitomized the end of the Cold War, many countries experienced new forms of democratization with the involvement of non-State actors in politics. It had taken two decades for the democratic transition to spread around the world. Blossoming civil society organizations would need another decade to “democratize democracy” () in these countries. In the meantime, almost every country from Latin America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Asia had undertaken major systemic reforms towards democracy. This makes the comparison of public accountability regimes of the utmost relevance, as exemplified in this new volume edited by Ernesto Isunza and Adrian Gurza for Peter Lang’s series ‘Political Sociology for the 21st Century Challenges’.
The first question that comes to mind even before opening this book and exploring the collection of case studies from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, China and South Africa is: Why compare public accountability across such different countries? The authors argue that these countries share a common experience of post-authoritarian transition, which would make them part of the same democratization wave.
